Mai Mai Miracle
Aug. 7th, 2020 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingMai Mai Miracle is a pastel-colored anime movie about two sweet little girls who live in the countryside in the 1950s and have sweet little adventures while fantasizing about another sweet little girl who might have lived in the same town during the Heian period. They go on walks, run through the fields, build a dam with some other kids, and raise a wild goldfish, and it's all very lovely and gentle until...
...about fifteen minutes before the movie ends, the father of one of the kids hangs himself after his wife finds out that he was having an affair with a bar hostess in a neighboring port town, and the sweet little group of children breaks up, presumably to never see each other again.
I was not expecting that.
On the other hand, I appreciate the movie's lack of formal structure. I'm starting to get to the point where I find formal structure artificial and annoying, and this has made watching most American movies difficult.
People can read and watch what they want, of course, but I personally think "plot" is overrated.
I suspect this is one of the reasons I enjoy fanfic so much. I am here for the ideas and the characters and the worldbuilding and the quality of the writing. Who cares about the plot?
...about fifteen minutes before the movie ends, the father of one of the kids hangs himself after his wife finds out that he was having an affair with a bar hostess in a neighboring port town, and the sweet little group of children breaks up, presumably to never see each other again.
I was not expecting that.
On the other hand, I appreciate the movie's lack of formal structure. I'm starting to get to the point where I find formal structure artificial and annoying, and this has made watching most American movies difficult.
People can read and watch what they want, of course, but I personally think "plot" is overrated.
I suspect this is one of the reasons I enjoy fanfic so much. I am here for the ideas and the characters and the worldbuilding and the quality of the writing. Who cares about the plot?
